1. Field of the Invention.
The invention relates to an oven that has a dome covering two flat surfaces arranged one above another, wherein food is cooked on both surfaces and fuel is burned on the lower of the two surfaces. The invention also relates to a method of manufacturing such an oven.
2. The Prior Art.
Typically ovens are heated from the outside of the cooking area in order to heat the air and cook the food. Additionally, in structures such as stoves, fireplaces, and other devices that have a partially enclosed space within which solid fuel is burned, the surface on which the fuel rests is not the surface on which the food is placed to be cooked. Prior art cooking structures of this type have been unable to take advantage of the fuel efficiency derived from heating a cooking surface by burning fuel thereon and then placing food to be cooked on the heated surface.
Furthermore, in many cases the shape of the cooking structures utilized heretofore exhibited deficiencies in the reflection of heat radiated by the burning fuel back onto the cooking surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,108,138 to Petin and Richardson avoids such drawbacks by providing an oven which includes a dome of refractory material supported by a substantially flat, smooth refractory base on which both food is cooked and solid fuel is burned. The oven has a single opening in the dome wall connected to a passageway through which food and fuel are placed into and removed from the oven, and which also provides access to a flue located just outside the single opening and adjacent to the passageway. Such ovens have not been entirely satisfactory, however, particularly with respect to the restricted flow of air through the dome resulting in a less than optimum combustion of the solid fuel and inefficient cooking of the food. Additionally, the ovens provided an undesirably limited amount of cooking surface inasmuch as the cooking surface necessarily was shared with the solid fuel.